Working Paper: NBER ID: w31506
Authors: Yannai A. Gonczarowski; Ori Heffetz; Clayton Thomas
Abstract: A menu description presents a mechanism to player i in two steps. Step (1) uses the reports of other players to describe i’s menu: the set of i’s potential outcomes. Step (2) uses i’s report to select i’s favorite outcome from her menu. Can menu descriptions better expose strategyproofness, without sacrificing simplicity? We propose a new, simple menu description of Deferred Acceptance. We prove that—in contrast with other common matching mechanisms—this menu description must differ substantially from the corresponding traditional description. We demonstrate, with a lab experiment on two elementary mechanisms, the promise and challenges of menu descriptions.
Keywords: strategyproofness; mechanism design; menu descriptions; deferred acceptance
JEL Codes: D47; D82
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| type of description (Y91) | participants' understanding of strategyproofness (C70) |
| menu description (Y60) | straightforward behavior (D01) |
| traditional description (Y20) | straightforward behavior (D01) |
| participants' understanding of strategyproofness (C70) | straightforward behavior (D01) |